U.S. and South Korean Websites Still Affected by Cyber Attack

On July 4th, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was launched against many U.S. and South Korean websites. A previous article from OCC discussed some of the U.S. government websites what were affected by the attack. However, those were not the only sites that were affected by the attack over the weekend. U.S. sites affected by the DDoS attack were: the White House, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission, Secret Service, Transportation Department, National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq stock market, and The Washington Post. South Korean sites that were affected were: the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, National Assembly, Korea Exchange Bank, Shinhan Bank, and Naver (South Korea's top Internet portal). Most of the sites were back to normal operations by Monday, but some, such as the Federal Trade Commission, Treasury Department, and Secret Service were still reporting issues Tuesday. The size (almost two dozen U.S. and South Korean sites) and length (about three days) made South Korea assume that the DDoS attacks were most likely backed by the North Korean government. However, the U.S. and other top Internet analysts say it's too early to make a claim as to who the attacker(s) were. SecureITExperts' Mark Rasch said, "There's no difference between dropping a logic bomb and dropping a TNT bomb in the law of war." He was implying that the repercussions of a government backed DDoS attack of this size and duration will be severe.